As you probably know, Adrian Peterson recently appealed his indefinite suspension and lost. That means the 2013 NFL MVP is out for the year after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of assaulting his four-year-old son.

On the heels of the sad and messy Ray Rice video controversy, it looked like the NFL had handled this scandal quite well. However, judging by the new Adrian Peterson audio recording that just hit the web today, that is not the case at all. It turns out the NFL screwed this up, too.

What is this audio recording? It’s a phone conversation between Peterson and NFL executive Troy Vincent. In it, Vincent promises Peterson that he will only be suspended for two games if he submits and “go[es] through the process.”

That “process” included a meeting with the league. However, Peterson did not go because, legally, he did not have to go. So the league suspended him indefinitely.

Here’s an ABC News report with snippets of the recorded phone conversation:

Peterson and the NFLPA are now suing the NFL, with Peterson’s lawyers claiming the league gave a harsher punishment in retaliation for that missed meeting. However, the recording likely won’t affect the outcome of that suit. Troy Vincent told Peterson to play ball if he only wanted a two-game suspension. Peterson did not play ball. So the league acted. There’s no ambiguity there.

So what’s the big problem? The big problem for the NFL is that, at Peterson’s appeal hearing on Friday, December 12, Troy Vincent flat out lied about his conversations with Peterson. He said he never made any promises, and that is clearly not true.